DeCruzing Across the USAhttps://decruzing.wordpress.com
A Family Travelog Tue, 20 Mar 2018 04:15:45 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://s2.wp.com/i/buttonw-com.pngDeCruzing Across the USAhttps://decruzing.wordpress.com
Dunes, Beaches and Sculpture Gardenshttps://decruzing.wordpress.com/2016/09/03/dunes-beaches-and-sculpture-gardens/
https://decruzing.wordpress.com/2016/09/03/dunes-beaches-and-sculpture-gardens/#respondSat, 03 Sep 2016 20:29:16 +0000http://decruzing.wordpress.com/?p=357After Chicago, we spent some time at the Indiana Dunes State Park, hiking the dunes and swimming in Lake Michigan.

Lake Michigan has waves! It was odd. The ground drops off pretty quickly, and it’s fresh water, so you don’t float that well, but it was fun!

Hi Chicago!

We hiked up “Devil’s Slide”. As you can see, I was not quite up to the challenge. I made it, but it wasn’t pretty. The building is a fort from the Revolutionary War (I think it’s a replica? Not quite sure).The boys (all 3) decided to run down the back side of Devil’s Slide. The return looked like this:

From Indiana, we drove to Wisconsin and has some dinner – cheese curds and walleye with Spotted Cow beer. And we watched the sun set over the Mississippi backwaters.

The next morning, we went for a dip in the river. With the giant catfish

Not all of those ripples are from the current

I went in!

They caught a frog. At the swimming beach.This is from the campground road, it’s just a cool marshy area of the river.

We drove through Minnesota, stopping at Blue Earth to visit the Jolly Green Giant!

We drove through Iowa for a bit, just to say we went to Iowa, then ended up in the prairies of South Dakota. Where’s Laura Ingalls?

We took a quick side trip to Devil’s Gulch, which Jesse James jumped his horse to get away from the law. The trail was horribly marked, but the view was pretty.

From the bridge that now spans the gulch

Looking up at the bridge.

And since it was a Sunday, we were able to play tourist at a John Deere shop

Ok, they’re kind of impressively large.

We stopped at the Porter Sculpture Garden. Todd was extremely impressed by this place, so I’ll let him do the post. But, if you see a giant steer off of I-90 in South Dakota, take the next exit and go. It’s worth it.

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]]>https://decruzing.wordpress.com/2016/09/03/dunes-beaches-and-sculpture-gardens/feed/0DSC04331nicyldDSC04247.JPGDSC04306.JPGDSC04249.JPGDSC04253.JPGDSC04268.JPGDSC04275.JPGDSC04276.JPGDSC04277.JPGDSC04284.JPGDSC04285.JPGDSC04403.JPGDSC04442.JPGDSC04439.JPGDSC04472.JPGDSC04486.JPGDSC04565.JPGDSC04624.JPGDSC04669.JPGDSC04677.JPGDSC04700.JPGDSC04768.JPGChicagohttps://decruzing.wordpress.com/2016/09/02/chicago/
https://decruzing.wordpress.com/2016/09/02/chicago/#respondFri, 02 Sep 2016 11:50:49 +0000http://decruzing.wordpress.com/?p=296After Ohio, we drove to Indiana and stayed at the Indiana Dune State Park and took the commuter rail into the Chicago. We spent the morning at the Field Museum, then had our personal tour guide, Phil (who we went to college with), give us the grand tour of Chicago that afternoon. Honestly, this New Yorker/Bostonian was really impressed with Chicago, it’s a nice, and pretty, city.

The Field Museum was the start of our “dino-tour” part of our vacation. First stop was Dinosaur Sue the T. Rex. Pete was more than a little excited to finally see her in person. He has been saying that he had to go to the Field Museum since Kindergarten, when he read a book on Dinosaur Sue. Fun Fact: her head is too heavy, so that’s a replica. The original is in a case upstairs, where you can get a really good look at how it was crushed. It was awesome!

As is typical for any museum, Pete read every.single.info.panel. So we moved at a snails pace. We did manage to get in a bunch of the special exhibits, including the soil critters, where you go through a “shrink ray” so you’re only 1.5″ tall. The animatronics were sufficiently creepy with their sudden insect movements and amplified insect noises. These were the two quietest cicadas we saw/heard on the trip. Thanks to this picture, the boys recognized empty cicada shells in PA on our way home.

The Evolution Hall was amazing. Boston seriously needs a real Natural History Museum (ok, and/or I need to get to the one at Harvard). They started with the oldest fossils and you moved through, getting closer to modern times with every step. There may have been some bio-geek squeaking! Things museums need to rethink: having a duckbill dinosaur “noise replicator”.

The first fossil we got to touch this trip!

The museum has a DNA lab, with actual scientists attempting to work while “on display”, complete with signs saying “Don’t tap on the glass, it annoys the scientists”. Pete was more interested in reading than listening to me talk about it. Granted, there were quite a few “when I did this in grad school…” Hey, if you ever had to read a DNA gel, you know what I’m talking about! And what Natural History museum would be complete without the rocks and minerals exhibit. They had a meteorite, which apparently was the most awesome thing ever, based on Pete’s expression:

And there were Narwhals, narwhals, living in the ocean, causing a commotion, ’cause they are so awesome.

Right before we left, we went to the special exhibit of the Terracotta Warriors. I don’t know what I was expecting, but this was amazing. It was a sampling of the statues from the first Emperor of China’s tomb. They had a few replicas that were painted, but the originals were extremely impressive

The horses, chariots and soldiers are originals, anything wood or leather was reproduced. The banners above are close ups of the different warriors faces. Because they all had different faces. All 8000 of them!

This was my favorite display. The front two men are archers, but their bows have disintegrated. The middle-left man was a chariot driver with reins in his hands, and the back-left man had a sword in his right hand.

An officer.

Then, we met Phil for some real Chicago pizza and a tour of the city

Pete loved the super-cheesy pizza, of course. You can see Brian’s protest pose on the left.Phil decided to get some assistance catching Pokemon.

The boys looking up the cool curved building.

Their view!

And of course, we had to visit Millennial Park

The bean was pretty cool

I love that you get the skyline in the background!

We hit the crazy playground in the park (the boys loved it), then walked along Lake Michigan back to our previously-unknown-to-Phil train stop and back to Indiana. The adventure continues…

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]]>https://decruzing.wordpress.com/2016/09/02/chicago/feed/0nicyldDSC03998.JPGDSC04082.JPGDSC04023.JPGDSC04058.JPGDSC04062.JPGDSC04082.JPGDSC04085.JPGDSC04091.JPGDSC04105.JPGDSC04111.JPGDSC04115.JPGDSC04113.JPGDSC04124.JPGDSC04127.JPGDSC04146.JPGDSC04145.JPGDSC04186.JPGDSC04189.JPGDSC04192.JPGDSC04194.JPGMaumee State Park, Oregon, Ohiohttps://decruzing.wordpress.com/2016/08/29/maumee-state-park-oregon-ohio/
https://decruzing.wordpress.com/2016/08/29/maumee-state-park-oregon-ohio/#respondMon, 29 Aug 2016 16:18:37 +0000http://decruzing.wordpress.com/?p=260I left off right before we got to Maumee State Park in Ohio. It’s right on Lake Erie and has a marsh/wetland ecosystem with a gorgeous nature trail. The day and a half we stayed here deserves its own post.

Our campground was about 1.5 miles from the beach, so we decided to hike it. It was a nice, paved, shaded trail, that went past a small stocked pond, that was open to kids 16 and under for catch and release fishing.

Right after the pond, we saw The Big Hill (yes, that’s is name). Of course, there was a path up The Big Hill and guess who wanted to climb it?

So up we go…

The view from the top was actually really nice, especially when we realized it cut a mile off the hike to the lake!

The lake was refreshing but a little slimy and you could see two power plants in the distance (you can’t see the nuclear one in this photo, but it’s right about where the water spot on the lens is, to the right of the traditional power plant).And the obligatory photo of Ear-y the bear at Lake Erie

The next day, we ended up at the Nature Center (thanks to a small snafu with potable vs gray vs black vs non-potable water definitions). The Nature Center had a small lab with live and taxidermied animals.

Then, we hit the trail.

Since it was a marsh, we found some of my old friend Purple Loosestrife (I did my master’s thesis on this pretty, yet invasive plant)

We hiked up to an observation deck and got a great view over the marsh grass

On the hike back, we saw a few critters including two baby white tail deer that were actually walking under the boardwalk at a few points.

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]]>https://decruzing.wordpress.com/2016/08/29/maumee-state-park-oregon-ohio/feed/0nicyldDSC03777.JPGDSC03779.JPGDSC03783.JPGDSC03785.JPGDSC03792.JPGDSC03810.JPGDSC03837.JPGDSC03874.JPGDSC03857.JPGDSC03882.JPGDSC03888.JPGDSC03892.JPGDSC03900.JPGDSC03902.JPGDSC03909.JPGThe first few days – Marlborough, MA to Canton, OHhttps://decruzing.wordpress.com/2016/08/27/the-first-few-days-marlborough-ma-to-canton-oh/
https://decruzing.wordpress.com/2016/08/27/the-first-few-days-marlborough-ma-to-canton-oh/#respondSat, 27 Aug 2016 13:18:37 +0000http://decruzing.wordpress.com/?p=218Ok, we’ve been home for a week and I just realized that we still haven’t posted any real photos or filled in a lot of the gaps that the lack of cell signal and, honestly, just exhaustion at the end of the day, created. So, I’m going to try to catch up by going through the 10,000 or so photos and a few hours of GoPro video and do a few days per update. There will be lots of pictures in the posts!

Every morning we took a picture, like the one you see at the top. That way we knew where we were, what day it was and where we were going. Don’t laugh, I had to check the spreadsheet most days!

Our first day in PA was just a quiet campsite (you can see us at the end of the road on the right). We had s’mores, caught fireflies, watched bats catch fireflies (kinda cool and sad at the same time, but when there’s no mosquitos, they’ve got to eat something).Then we drove to Ohio, stayed in Marlboro Township! There were some nice sunsets over the farms.

This was when we realized the dog “sticker” on the door looked so realistic that people were stopping to look at it. We named him Giggles, since after realizing he wasn’t real, there was laughter.

In Ohio, our first stop was the Football Hall of Fame. I wasn’t expecting much, but I really enjoyed it! There were a lot of interactive exhibits, and some really interesting history.When the boys see an open football field, this was bound to happen! They didn’t even have a ball (yet)It’s hard to read Brian’s shirt, but it says “You’re a cheetah” and “Dude, quit lion”. So… yeah… #FreeBrady

They even had the audio in the helmets!

Todd and I had the opportunity to “rewrite” history as well.

Todd fixed 2007

While I fixed 1991!

We camped that night at Maumee State Park on Lake Erie, but that deserves it’s own post!

]]>https://decruzing.wordpress.com/2016/08/19/decruzing-2016-by-the-numbers/feed/0img_7223nicyldCaptian’s Log Road Date 39.20https://decruzing.wordpress.com/2016/08/18/captians-log-road-date-39-20/
https://decruzing.wordpress.com/2016/08/18/captians-log-road-date-39-20/#respondThu, 18 Aug 2016 00:41:06 +0000http://decruzing.wordpress.com/?p=138
A fitting sunset over the fields of Lancaster, PA, the final port of the USS aRVoh. Tomorrow my galant crew and I will undertake the final 300+ mile travel leg of our journey as we return to our home port. It has been a long amazing journey of over 8000 miles and the USS aRVoh has served us well. She has made it at warp 8.0 down the long stretches of highway in places like Wyoming and the oil fields of Texas. She has stuggled at times with the twists and turns and steep grades of places like Bighorn Sheep National Forest and the Mountains of West Virginia, but has not faultered. She has even ventured into some urban areas like Houston, TX and more recently Norfolk, VA and come out unscathed. She has been more than just a vessel. She has served as our home for the last six weeks and she will be missed as we return her to Rental Port to get refitted for her next captain’s journey. I’m sure when I resume piloting my smaller shuttle it will seem eriely quiet as over the last 39 days I have become accustomed to the roar of the USS aRVoh’s engines and her various creaks, knocks and rattles.

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]]>https://decruzing.wordpress.com/2016/08/18/captians-log-road-date-39-20/feed/0decrutOne month on the road…https://decruzing.wordpress.com/2016/08/10/one-month-on-the-road/
https://decruzing.wordpress.com/2016/08/10/one-month-on-the-road/#respondWed, 10 Aug 2016 04:04:50 +0000http://decruzing.wordpress.com/2016/08/10/one-month-on-the-road/Time has been flying by, can’t believe we’ve been on the road for a whole month. Just left Texas and we are currently in Arkansas as we start to make our way back across the US by a more southern route that will take us through parts of Tennessee, Kentucky and West Virginia. Had some amazing food in Texas with some great BBQ and Tex Mex. Here’s a taste of some of our adventures at White Sands National Monument, Carlsbad Caverns, Seaworld San Antonio and Johnson Space Center:

On the way to White Sands we went through Pie Town, NM so of course had to stop and get some very tasty pie. The nice lady at the place told us about the VLA (Very Large Array) down the road which is a radio telescope observatory with 27 massive 25 meter diameter antenna that are picked up and moved about every three months along railroad tracks so they are spaced out in a “y” configuration which ranges from .5 miles from the center to 13 miles. The VLA was the beginning setting for the movie Contact. White Sands pops up out of the desert and result of the perfect storm of geography and climate which allows gypsum (as in Sheetrock material) to be washed down from the surrounding mountains into the bowl and then the lake in the center evaporates allowing the gypsum to crystallize and then the precise amount of heavy winds break it up into fine sand to create a vast dune field. The boys had a blast sledding down the dunes and we even fired up the generator on the RV to make dinner so we could stay for the sunset ranger led tour.

Next we journeyed to the center of the earth at Carlsbad caverns (some footage for the movie was actually shot there) and it was massive. We hiked down the mile+ long steep winding trail from the natural entrance and took a guided tour deep in the earth. Unlike Howe’s caverns, which is tiny by comparison, Carlsbad does not have an flowing River thus is not actively growing (for the most part). We also went back that evening for the Bat Flight to watch somewhere between 100-200 thousand bats spiral up out of the natural entrance. No photography was allowed as all electronics had to be turned off to minimize our impact on the bat’s sonar. It was spectacular. Just like in the Batman movies they actually came out in a coordinated spiral as they rose up and flew off to feed on mainly a type of moth that is a pest for local farmers. There were also a fair number of cave swallows that are the “day shift” as the ranger put it who had to fight the tide of bats to try and get to their nests for the night. In the red/white tape pic, that is a bat skeleton that got formed into one of the cave elements.

Next we were off to San Antonio and sent an entire day at Sea World. Yes, that is me embracing my inner cheerleader as I and two other lucky bearded fellows got selected by the Sea Lion show’s pre show Clown/MC to “assist” in the show. Note I won the first round and was “rewarded” with the skirt and the wig. I’m surprised Nicole got any pictures as she was purple she was laughing so hard.

The boys were definitely wowed by the size of the Killer Whales and, no I have not seen Blackfish (but plan to). They had two differnet shows with the Killer whales (and all the animals). The first one was mainly educational talking about Killer Whales in the wild and at Seaworld and how Seaworld will no longer breed the whales but those there will “always have a home at Seaworld.” The 2nd show was definitely more entertainment oriented, but more “natural” than I guess the previous razzel/dazzle shows before Blackfish came out. The Beluga Whale/Dolphin show had a very Cirque Du Soliel feel to it with acrobatic divers, synchronized swimming and the like. It was very hot and humid, welcome to the Texas heat. It was only in the 90s but real feel was almost 110. After the 109 dry heat of Zion, this definitely seemed a lot worse. Fortunately, as part of the park they had a water park which we spent the end of the day in. For dinner we hit Rudy’s “the worst BBQ in Texas” which was literally in a gas station/country store. The Brisket was A-Mah-Zing and the rub on the Ribs was so good you didn’t even need sauce.

We went into downtown San Antonio to check out he Alamo which had some historical reenactors there as it was on a Saturday. We walked back to the RV down the river walk which was several degrees cooler. Made the mistake of not reading the entire sign at the private kiosk pay lot we parked at like 1/2 mile away from the Alamo and ended up getting a boot on the RV as we took up two spots and only paid for one. God forbid if the one other car in the entirely empty 40-50 car lot on a Saturday needed to park directly behind me. However, the little parking Nazi dude did come by very quickly after I called the number on the sticker on the window and it was only $35 to get it taken off not the couple of hundred it probably would have cost in Boston. Would have been an extra $10 for the 2nd parking spot so really only cost $25. Forgot to add pics of Roswell, which we hit on the way to San Antonio, so the next group is both before (Roswell) and after (Alamo) the Seaworld stuff. Roswell which was much larger and a lot more urban than we expected. I had kind of envisioned a little town that embraced the kichy alien legacy not a large urban center that probably would have been just as happy to forget all about it. Hit the World’s Largest Pistachio on the was to Roswell and camped at Bottomless Lake State Park and had a nice Sunset over the tower on the visitor center.

After San Anotnio we headed over to Houston to go to the Johnson Space Center. As we neared Houston the drivers became as aggressive as Bostonians. I hadn’t been passed on the right even once in the previous 5000+ miles, yet while doing 75 (the speed limit) and passing 18 wheelers I still had Texans in their pickups zipping in and out who would wiz by on my right without batting an eye. I don’t think Nic got any pics but the highway ramp systems they had near Houston were crazy. Four to five layers in some cases going 8-10 stories high with crazy steep grades. Guess you can get away with that if you don’t have to deal with feet of snow. Got to the Space Center right before it opened and left about 15 min before it closed. Went on both the Blue and Red Tram tours and saw all the shows/movies including the Space Station and Curiosity Mars Rover “update” talks. First pic is the boys touching a moon rock. They had the actual jet that shuttled the Space Shuttles around there with a full scale model Space Shuttle mounted on it. The talks weren’t live updates but more about the current status of the space station and and Curiosity missions. One very interesting tidbit was when JPL was making Curiosity they wanted to put their logo on it but NASA said no. So what they did is make the slots that were needed in Curiosity’s wheels to let debris fall out imprint morse code for “J” “P” and “L” every time they did a full revolution. A fact they forgot to mention to NASA until after Curiosity had launched.

The Tram Tours took us out to the actual buildings of the space center where Astronauts really train and NASA manages all manned missions. It was a Sunday so we only saw only the one Engineer working on one of the future Mars Rovers cabs. The first tour took us to THE mission control, like the one where the speaker you see in the picture next to the “Public Affiars Officer” plaque was the one that words such as “The Eagle has landed” and “Houston, we have a problem” were actually heard through. We sat in the orange chairs that Presidents have sat in, pretty cool. The other Tram tour took us into the building with the full scale training modules for the Space Station, including the Russian and Japanese modules that the Astronaunts train on and Engineers use to troubleshoot issues that happen real time in space with. They also had the next generation Orion capsule, the one that is currently slated to be used for a future manned mission to Mars at some point in the next few decades. They also had a rocket display which had one of the truly massive Saturn 5 rockets from the Apollo missions.

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]]>https://decruzing.wordpress.com/2016/08/10/one-month-on-the-road/feed/0decrutOne Picture Post to Rule them Allhttps://decruzing.wordpress.com/2016/08/04/one-picture-post-to-rule-them-all/
https://decruzing.wordpress.com/2016/08/04/one-picture-post-to-rule-them-all/#respondThu, 04 Aug 2016 06:06:21 +0000http://decruzing.wordpress.com/2016/08/04/one-picture-post-to-rule-them-all/Trying to get on to post pictures has been difficult as we are often early to rise ( 4 am twice in Grand Canyon for Sunrise for me) and usualy quite tired by the end of the day or getting in late. But, I have been taking tons of pics and here is an attempt at a catchup post.

Some of the sights along the roads of the rural Midwest with lots of soy and corn crops:

Mount Rushmore was amazing, the detail is breathtaking. You can almost see the non-existent lenses of Teddy’s glasses:

Badlands, the animals. Last one is a herd of buffalo, our first encounter with the large beasts:

Prairie Dogs of the Badlands, the ones with the plague (yep as in the Black Death) so we stayed in the RV for the most part the close up is with my telephoto lens while we were viewing the buffalo in the pics above.

The scenery of the Balands, just pops up out of nowhere from the plains.

Really cool sculpture park I spied from the road in South Dakota, I saw the large bull’s head from the highway and we went to investigate. Had a whole pagan thing going on with the red robed priests leading up to the horned guards and the large bull figure. Inside the Bull was a very wicker man type scene with a figure/sacrifice suspended inside.

Our close encounter of the third kind at Devil’s Tower where we surprisingly ran into the Seemungals, friends from Marlborough on their own vacation. Also swung up to Deadwood and popped into the Sturgis Harley Davision a few weeks ahead of the rally.

Our Dinosuar dig tour of an active site in Thermopolis, South Dakota where we dug for fossils and got to do some work in the lab as well:

Yellowstone: the Animals. The black bear was going to town on a berry bush right next to the road. The same morning we got up early (5 am) to go to Hayden Valley and spied the grizzly we also got to see a pack of wolves, pups and all. However, they were so far away the pictures did not do it justice. If you do go to Yellowstone, definitely take the time to get up early to go see them as you will encounter the enthusiasts and their spotting scopes versus the tourists you will find trying to catch a glimpse of the more elusive animals at dusk.

Yellowstone, the sights and geothermal wonders. Three words: Grand Prismatic Pool. I’ve seen pictures of the vivid colors of the microbial mats, but the reality is breath taking. The first geyser is of course Old Faithful, but the 2nd is a larger one that goes off far less frequently that my patience was rewarded with a 200 foot explosion.

Great Salt Lake and the Grand Tetons. The bouyancy of the Great Salt lake was amazing, you could practically sit up and not sink, however the water was filled with Brine Shrimp aka Sea Monkeys and Nicole and Peter weren’t too fond of bathing with them and if you got the super salt saturated water in your eyes (which Brian and I did) it burns real *insert appropriate explitive* bad. The glow in the first picture is from the remnants of forest fire just over the ridge that evacuated the park two days prior to our arrival. It was mostly contained by the time we got there. The boys broke out their two man tent at the Great Salt lake.

The Canyons of the Colorado Plateau: Bryce, Zion and the Grand

Hiking up the Virgin River in the Narrows at Zion. Highly recommend renting the water hiking shoes, we hiked 6 miles total and no way we could have gone that far in our Teva sandals.

Rafting on the Colorado River in the calm part near Page, AZ. Water was cooooolllld, but refreshing in the heat of the canyon. Some free range “wildish” horses came down over the dune as we passed by as well.

Grand Canyon

Petrified Forest, the blue/purple of the badlands here was amazing.

Took a detour to hit Sunset Crater to hike on it’s lava field and see the remains of a large pueblo structure.

Catches us up to within a few days, still to come White Sands, Roswell (which was a bit disappointing) and Carlsbad Caverns, but it’s late and we have a long drive as we venture into Texas tomorrow.

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]]>https://decruzing.wordpress.com/2016/08/04/one-picture-post-to-rule-them-all/feed/0decrutCaptain’s Log 0025.20https://decruzing.wordpress.com/2016/08/04/captains-log-0025-20/
https://decruzing.wordpress.com/2016/08/04/captains-log-0025-20/#commentsThu, 04 Aug 2016 05:02:04 +0000http://decruzing.wordpress.com/?p=105The last two and a half weeks have been a whirlwind of activity, much of which has been dipping in and out of communications range. We have also been sucked deep into a Vacation Time-Space Vortex where calendar dates and days of the week hold little to no meaning. Our sense of time is now counted by destinations, miles to be traveled and activities. The USS aRVoh has certainly not been idle as we have pushed on and successfully made our four day East/West coast summit in Yellowstone for peace talks with Grand Ambassador Cole of the Hudsons and his entourage of Chief Medical Officer Beth and the grizzled, war veteran General “the King” George.

Having a better feel for the controls of our intrepid vessel and far from the congested travel ways of the East our encounters with the 18 wheeled Battlecruisers are far more manageable and have been limited to far fewer roads as our journey has taken us off the commercial byways. However, out in the vastness of the western reaches, sudden gusts of wind are a clear and present danger as the USS aRVoh acts like a sail and our course can be abruptly and curse-ladenly adjusted with little to no warning. The Walmartians maintain a strong presence in even the more remote regions and we have made use of their trading posts regularly. We had to make one minor repair to replace the wiper blades as one met its demise during a sudden rain shower, but beyond one quart of oil and the constant burning of fuel the USS aRVoh has preformed well. She has struggled a bit with rapid changes of elevation, but she holds her own and the tow/haul setting with the engine brake and cruise control have helped a lot. On the long stretches of road out west I have gotten her top speed up to warp 8.0 and the first time she seemed to be ready to fly apart at the seams but after a few times I have become accustomed to the new rattles and shimmies of her max speed.

Personal Log: I have missed my Kuerig caffeine replicator, but have been making due with the 10 cup brewer we stowed along. It has taken some time and there are still some programming and ratio errors, but I usually have a passable caffeine ration ready each morning.

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]]>https://decruzing.wordpress.com/2016/08/04/captains-log-0025-20/feed/1decrutWe Have A Cell Signal! https://decruzing.wordpress.com/2016/07/31/we-have-a-cell-signal/
https://decruzing.wordpress.com/2016/07/31/we-have-a-cell-signal/#respondSun, 31 Jul 2016 14:49:27 +0000http://decruzing.wordpress.com/2016/07/31/we-have-a-cell-signal/Sorry for the lack of posts, but national parks tend not to have cell towers. It’s like they want you to actually enjoy nature or something! Most of the pictures are still in the real camera, but here’s a quick update of the past week or so…
Yellowstone: this place is even more awesome than I expected. I know everyone said its amazing, but that just scratches the surface. The wildlife (we saw all the key critters except for moose. The moose we thought we saw was an elk. Those suckers are HUGE) was right there! We HEARD a black bear eating berries because he was RIGHT FRICKEN NEXT TO US (we were in a car). The grand prismatic lake actually made me speechless. Between the colors, steam and wind (you never see the steam or the wind in the photos) we didn’t want to leave.

I didn’t know what to expect with the Grand Tetons, but they were awesome. We saw a bald eagle. He was just hanging out. Of course that was the one time Todd didn’t have his zoom lens. We hiked along the lake so we could see all the peaks. We were rushing a bit, but the view was worth it! We also met our only cranky park ranger here. The boys have been doing the Junior Ranger programs (highly recommended! They’re booklets to fill out about the park and you get a badge at the end. For free! Anyone ages 4 and up is eligible. Yes, even adults!) and the Grand Tetons require a ranger program, which we missed because we were in urgent care for Brian’s bug bite. She had us wait around for 20 minutes to go to the next one. (Side note: we missed a couple pages at Zion and they still signed off the boys).

Antelope Island was crazy! Between the fire, the stars (first clear night without campground lights) and the Great Salt Lake, I would totally go back. Swimming with brine shrimp/sea monkeys was weird but floating was so fun! I had a blast watching the seagulls chase the brine flies for breakfast.

Then we stopped at an old Mormon Pioneer fort: Cove Fort. It was very odd realizing that “current” history out here is a couple of hundred years less than back east. An old building here is from the 1850s. I don’t think that counts as historic in Boston our tour guide recommended Bryce Canyon over Zion. So we deviated from plan (yep, I deviated!) and hit Bryce.

As soon as we entered the park, we were blown away by the geology. Then, we found out we were in Red Canyon, which the national forest service cares for and calls “Bryce’s sneak peak”. Bryce was amazing and freaky, due to the lack of guard rails. My favorite were the stubborn plants growing in the middle of the canyon.

Then we went to Zion and came in through the tunnel. After that road, I think Todd may be willing to try driving mount Washington again! Again, the geology was breathtaking. We woke up early and took one of the first shuttles up to the Narrows. It’s a 1 mile hike on a paved path that ends in the Virgin River. You then can continue up to 5 miles up River. We had rented neoprene socks and aquatic hiking books and wooden sticks to help with our hike. I was planning on going to the fork, which is where the high ground ends and before the official “Narrows” start. But, the flow was only 35 gpm when we set out and no likely flash floods, so we went up to floating rock, which is about 3 miles up river. If we had lunch, we may have kept going! Brian had his GoPro on and recorded the whole upstream trip. By the time we got back, it was 1230 or so and the river was packed!

We left Zion and headed to Page, AZ for a rafting trip. It was 5+ hrs total, 3 of them on the Colorado River. Our sense of perspective was thrown way off, everything seemed much smaller than it really was. The Colorado is 45 degrees year round because of the glen canyon dam. But when it’s 103, that’s pretty darn refreshing. We were rafting along the Navajo lands, and saw some free range horses, went through horseshoe bend and just felt very very small.

Then, the Grand Canyon. It’s huge. Like, “Wait, is this still the Grand Canyon?” huge. But, it’s also a very popular tourist attraction. So, you end up with the irritable older woman complaining that there aren’t enough shuttle buses. Or the lost woman who doesn’t speak English (the bus driver got her on the right bus to her family). If you do go, check out Desert View. It’s not on the shuttle bus route, but you can watch rafts go through the Rapids. Yaki Point for sunrise (no guardrails, minimal tourists) and any of the viewpoints just west of Desert View for sunset (some guardrails, minimal tourists). We didn’t hike down the canyon trails, so we left a day early.

Instead, we hiked sunset crater volcano. It is literally a volcano in the desert. Rather odd. It’s not a fertile soil as in Hawaii due to the lack of rain, but the pine trees are growing pretty well for the past 1000 years. Then we toured a pueblo, and watched a storm move across the desert.

And here we are now. Sitting on a corner in a campground in Winslow, AZ taking it easy